Nikki Haley’s uphill battle in Iowa

As more and more GOP presidential hopefuls sprout up this summer, each will take aim at former President Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the presumed frontrunners for the 2024 nomination. Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, recently had her shot in a CNN town hall. While she managed to distinguish herself from the pack leaders, she’ll face an uphill battle, especially in the Republican Party’s leadoff state, Iowa.

During the event, Haley fielded questions from likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers, planting a narrative to dispel some of the GOP’s concerns about her record and stances. She claims to have “strongarmed” the legislature as governor to take down the Confederate flag, in part because of the weighty context of the 2015 Charleston mass shooting. Haley also defended her silence on the terms of an abortion ban she would support — and on details about proposed changes for age eligibility for Social Security — as political pragmatism, not hedging. And she touted that magic 60-vote Senate threshold for consensus as the limit to what she’ll act on.

Haley didn’t exactly come out swinging at Trump and DeSantis, but she managed to get some hits in. And the media obliged, drawing attention in their post-town-hall coverage to contrasts, especially on Ukraine and Russia. Haley emphasized that it’s in U.S. national security interests for Ukraine to win, distinguishing herself from DeSantis, who has said that what’s going on is simply a “territorial dispute.” She took a jab at Democrats too, contending that Russian President Vladimir Putin was emboldened by the “debacle” of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

On Trump’s congratulating Kim Jong Un for North Korea landing a seat on the World Health Organization’s executive board, Haley hammered home that the North Korean leader is a “thug.” And she confirmed her earlier statements that the events of Jan. 6, 2021, represented a “terrible day” and that the former president is wrong to defend the violent protests.

In a different GOP context, those positions would be unremarkable. Political pragmatism, withholding praise for a tyrant, condemning political violence — all barely worth a mention. For a Republican candidate in 2023, however, it’s akin to giving voters a real choice. But it’s not clear yet whether that’s what GOP primary voters want, especially in Iowa.

Iowa Republicans, unlike their Democratic counterparts, have held onto the first-in-the-nation status of their caucuses. While activists will go through the motions of vetting the field, there’s every reason to expect the former president to dominate — and for distinctions articulated by those like Nikki Haley to pass without much thought.

Iowa has taken a decided red turn over the past few cycles, predating the Trump era. Sen. Joni Ernst’s 2014 inaugural win was a major blow to Democrats, who were used to the unwavering liberal voice of longtime incumbent Tom Harkin. Current Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, though elected in her own right in 2018, profited from serving as lieutenant governor to Terry Branstad, who returned to the gubernatorial seat in 2011 after three terms of Democratic control.

Republican dominance accelerated in 2020, with Trump in the November election carrying Iowa handily, reversing the back-to-back Obama wins in the state. By 2022, the GOP had a lock: a larger vote margin for Gov. Reynolds, stronger Republican majorities in the state legislature and control of the entire congressional delegation, including the return to the U.S. Senate of Charles Grassley, then 89 years old. Perhaps most concerning to Democrats, the GOP nabbed all but one of the executive offices in state government, including positions held for decades by Democrats.

There is a lingering sense at the national level that the former president was to blame for specific 2022 Republican losses, or for allowing Democrats to keep their midterm vote loss in check. This doesn’t resonate in Iowa. Neither, apparently, do the events of Jan. 6. A November 2021 Iowa Poll estimated a large majority of Republicans in the state thought it either an “unfortunate event” by then in the past or First Amendment-protected protest.

As the summer campaign heats up, the GOP field will expand and, no doubt, the candidates will blanket the early states. The adage that the path to success in the Iowa caucuses is to “organize, organize, organize” still carries weight, even though Sen. Ted Cruz’s monumental push in 2016 yielded him a paltry win over the largely no-show Trump.

This time around, Trump’s building out his organization and collecting endorsements. Gov. Reynolds is nominally neutral, but she was quick to weigh in at the end of March on the “sham indictment” of Trump on 30 counts of business fraud. The Florida governor is also working the state. But even with the support of some key GOP leaders and lingering concerns about Trump, including that he’s too old, DeSantis holds a distant second place in the polls.

Can Haley break away from the pack of those polling in the single digits? At present, she registers enough with Republicans for a conceivable stab at meeting the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) polling threshold for inclusion in the primary debates, which will start at the end of August. And in the town hall, she meandered her way to agreeing that she would pledge to support the eventual nominee, a new RNC requirement for debate inclusion.

Trump has previously said he wouldn’t make such a pledge. Even if he doesn’t — and if the RNC holds firm, keeping him from the debate platform — it’s a stretch to think that it would matter to Republican voters. At this stage, there’s not much more for anyone to learn about Trump. And if he hasn’t been knocked down over the past eight years by scandal, impeachment, and generally bad behavior, it’s hard to imagine a mere rival pulling it off.

Barbara Trish is a professor of political science at Grinnell College in Iowa.